seeing how regularly (as it should, per above) it is fielded alongside poor mudsloggers, I question the lack of any features explicitly designed with supporting the infantry escort in mind.
This is minor, but I disagree here. A battlesuit
is often deployed along with infantry, but it's not strictly an infantry support vehicle. I can easily see a situation where we would field nothing but battlesuits- some scenario where we're fighting lots of enemies with decent AP weapons, and no need for indoor operations. In fact, I'd say that infantry are more there to support the
battlesuits; battlesuits are much like modern tanks, which can't go inside buildings and are limited in urban operations. Infantry exist to flourish in those areas, but aren't what you want in a wide open field.
Powerful mechanic legs were deliberately chosen as means of transportation, and they offer greatly increased terrain crossing capability and are can be made far less exposed than, say, wheels or tracks. However, why stop at two? Except for aesthetic purposes (and one may add, for the sake of cognitive conservatism), the incident of upgraded mechanical legs between the Doctor and Pyro's initial character, Nekarios, shows that multiple legs can offer greater speed, stability (especially if they feature those ingenious wall-walking feet), and, most importantly, redundancy. What if a regular battlesuit's leg is blown off? It is crippled. What if a spider's leg is torn off? He just walks away. Thus, if we keep our new-model battlesuits walkers, I suggest designing them with six or eight legs - each of which can be less armored due to their redundancy.
I have two primary problems with this. First, and most relevant to you, is cost. Having six legs, even if they aren't armored, is going to cost more than two armored legs. Plus, you're not going to leave them entirely unarmored, because then the legs can be taken out even more easily.
The second problem is the fact that your users are still human. I dislike the idea that using the suit requires speciality training, when the UWM can shove any old shmuck into one of their battlesuits and have him operate effectively. Further, I have to wonder
how the user would operate the legs. He has eight to eleven limbs on his suit, but only four limbs on his body. He could just have basic control, like "forward" "backward" "sideways", etc, but he won't have the precise control that a battlesuit has.
Yes, this issue was proven wrong by Nekarios (and Jim), but they had direct links to the extra limbs from their brains. That would be a pretty big limitation for a battlesuit.
we should add a third tentacle-ish limb designed specifically to fit and support the battlesuit-specific weapons.
I like this idea, although there is the issue that it would add cost. Still, something like a tentacle could probably be armored much better than an articulated arm, which would make the suit a credible threat even if it were immobile.
Idea: If you make something like this, allow all the other limbs to fold into the main body, so that the suit can switch to a less vulnerable turret mode.
Finally, we might want to tinker with the size parameters of the battlesuit. For once, if it were less tall, it would be harder to hit and also could actually fit in the building floors, if not exactly building doors. To do so, we would, of coure, have to do away with pilot sitting in the cockpit - he would probably have to lie on his back. By having the flanks elongated, we can decrease the frontage and then human pilots are generally also 'elongated' along their height - which is length for us here. Thus the ideal cockpit shape is probably something of a flattened and elongated ellipsoid, or so I estimate.
Nyeeehhh, while this sounds good, I don't think it would work well. Old battlesuit armor is two feet thick, so it would just not be practical in any configuration, but new armor seems like it'll be about nine inches thick. That's eighteen inches of armor total, which would leave a little over a foot left for the cockpit, if you were just barely squeezing through doors. Maybe it would work if the pilot's laying on his side? Or, alternatively, standing and walking sideways?
Also, I don't think the pilot quite 'sits' in the cockpit. I think it's more of a relaxed lean. Their limbs do extend partially into the BS's limbs, after all.
That said, a battlesuit's powerful endoskeleton frame allows for much greater strength and stability than any infantryman could achieve, even with an exoskeleton and other upgrades.
Has PW explicitly said this? I mean, a battlesuit only gives +1 to strength and endurance, which is achievable with a exoskeleton, or synthbody, or a strong build...
It also doesn't give the +1 to CON that a synthbody gives, so it actually has
less stability.
Thus, why don't we equip our battlesuits with weapons designed around them, created to utilize their full potential?
Cost, primarily. The weapons can't come standard, unless the cost is reduced in some other dimension, so the normal limbs have to stay so the trooper can use their old weapons. That means that the heavy mount can't just replace the normal limbs, so it'll cost more.
Not that it isn't worth it, but it's a reason.
Most basic, we could build an really big Ultra Heavy Gauss Cannon capable of brute-forcing through the conventional armor of earlier battlesuits.
NO. The Heavy Gauss Cannon is just a
stupid gun, unless you use it as a mortar. The PSL is almost entirely superior, except for the inability to use nuclear rounds, and the slightly higher initial cost.
And I want to solve the latter problem, because the PSL is inefficiently large the more I think about it.
or just good old plasma cannon - and they would benefit from the power generator greatly as well, allowing for endless supply of ammunition.
Minor nitpick: I'm pretty sure the Plasma Projector's ammo is partially space magic. It does, after all, use automanips to contain the plasma, and I don't think it's large enough to have self-supplying AMs.
Although, if you mean the superhero-named plasma shotgun like Sean designed, then sure. Maybe we could call the thing a "fireant". ;P
Another thing we've almost never seen - transportation; frankly, I have little idea how in this day and age non-flying infantry is to be transported around the place and into the battle except when hot-dropped. Unless the APCs become more commonplace (they still feel more like utility vehicles rather than military ones), I suggest we add the option of transporting troops on top of the battlesuit - especially since for us in the 'Corps battlesuits are bound to remain way more common sight than any vehicle. It could potentially synergise well with the shields (if we are bound to make them quite small in diameter) or the above-suggested wall-climbing (which most of us are bound to lack). And just to make sure - it costs us next to nothing to make a few handles, so even if they go unused most of the time, it's worth the advantage in those situations we might need them; and if anyone is concerned about enemy infantry getting a good hold on our battlesuit because of those, we can place them tactically just around the claymores to increase the enemy casualties if they dare climb it.
This is a very, very good point. It's not enough to convince me that this is a better battlesuit design, but it's still a great point. The mention of handles makes me think of the scorpion tanks in halo.
This is a good enough point that I think I'll add some handles to the beetlesuit I'm making now. Like you said, we can position the claymores to kill anyone who grabs on, and they give plenty of advantage for friendly troops; imagine a pair of people sitting on the back of the battlesuit, shooting over the top.
All in all, I think this design won't work for a replacement battlesuit, but I think it would actually work really well for an alternative Heavy Robotic Body. Since the old version was just small enough to fit through a door, and the new beetlesuit might
already be small enough, a new HRB could potentially be small enough to fight in enclosed spaces too small for people. You know those scenes in movies where the heroes crawl through an airvent? Imagine that, but instead with dog-sized metal scorpions that can resist
anti-tank weapons!
Gaaah, why must I keep finding awesome things to try when I'm already busy with an important project? >.<
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